Shake table testing of a full-scale five-story building: Pre-test simulation of the test building and development of an NCS design criteria

This paper is one of five within a session discussing the findings from a full-scale, five-story building test program conducted at the NEES-UCSD Large High Performance Outdoor Shake. This paper focuses on the pre-test simulation of the test building with the objective of predicting its seismic response and thereby; (i) guiding the selection of earthquake motions for the test program and (ii) providing guidance for the design of various nonstructural components and systems (NCSs) to be installed in the test building. Two nonlinea,r finite element models were developed independently in this effort: 1) a macro-element based model was implemented in the OpenSees platform, and 2) a detailed finite element model was prepared using the general finite element software package DIANA. In this paper, the description and assumptions adopted for each of these two models are first provided, and then the simulation results for selected test motions are presented and compared. Utilizing these models, a procedure is developed to define project-specific NCSs design criteria. The developed design criteria are compared with the current code provisions and their implications discussed.